The Immorality of God - Slavery in the Old Testament

[athrock]

"You've ignored the point that a choice made under duress is not "free"."

I agree. Where is our conflict?

It seems to lie in the fact that you don't see the threat of eternal torment as a form of duress.  It is certainly such.

Oh. Well, I can certainly understand your point here. My apologies...I did not know what you were referencing when you said "duress".

First, I want you to know that I will give your objection some thought. That might take days or weeks. But I have this simmering on my back burner now, so to speak.

Second, my quick response would be this: If you say to your child, "If you clean your room, I will take you see a movie. If you don't clean your room, you will be grounded while the rest of the family goes without you." does this really limit the child's freedom to choose? Some kids might say, "Fine. I'll stay home." which sort of calls your bluff because what YOU wanted was for her to clean her room. But sure, the child might clean her room simply to avoid being grounded.

Now, what if you say to that child, "Brush your teeth, or you will get cavities or gum disease"? Is the child going to brush but only "under duress"? I mean, life is chock full of "if...then" scenarios like this, and many of them are negative. "If you do X, then Y will happen to you."

God is basically doing the same thing, though the stakes a much higher. He offers eternal life and happiness if you follow His plan, but He warns of the consequences should you choose to follow your own.

Since we don't know each other, grant me a little lattitude for speculation. Were you raised in a strict, fundamentalist Protestant home? If so, could it be that the eschatology of that Protestant denomination was unbalanced or even wrong? And it has messed you up bad?

"You've ignored the point that if your god is perfect, then by definition so should be his revelation ... and creations such as students of his morality, for that matter."

God's revelation IS perfect, but that doesn't mean that He gives it to us all at once, does it?

We're left to assume then that your god is fine with people suffering, considering that as a perfect communicator, he chooses not to reveal his true wishes on the immorality of slavery.

That doesn't follow, does it? Everyone suffers in various ways and to varying degrees. Is God responsible for all of that? Two things strike me. First, suffering bears fruit in the form of the development of our character. Frankly, it would be better to die as a noble slave than to live as a foppish prince. Removing all evil from the world would result in the loss of opportunities to learn courage, patience, forgiveness, and so on. Second, God has the end in mind...not the beginning. This life may be all we can see, but we can't even see that very well. What will happen to you tomorrow? Or next year? Your knowledge of this life is limited to the past and the present. But God see that as well as the future, and it is the eternal future that is most important.

Finally, God communicates perfectly that which we need to know. However, the fact that He keeps His own counsel does not mean that He is imperfect in any way.

"You've ignored the point that a timeless objective morality should not look any different from any historical vantage."

I don't play the guitar, but I'll stick with guitar analogies - at least until they completely fail me.  

As a teacher, you COULD give your student a difficult song to play...let's take one of the classics like "Free Bird" or "Stairway to Heaven"...by simply handing him the sheet music and wishing him well. Or, you could give him the chords, the riffs, whatever, a little at a time until he had all the skills in place to play the song. And the whole time when he's simply practicing chord changes without really knowing why you're having him practice them, the Song Remains the Same. (see what I did there?)

THEN you give him the sheet music, and say, "Play this." If you've put the pieces in place first, playing the solos should be easy with a little practice. 

You're once more equivocating an imperfect human teacher with the Perfect Creator of All That Is; but I'll humor this last attempt of yours in order to make my point.

Are you really arguing that your god couldn't not mount a cogent case against slavery simple enough to resonate with early Christians? I can: "Slavery is wrong because it hurts people and their ability to exercise the free will that I, your Maker, have given them." Or something along those lines. We're not writing an Yngwie Malmsteen solo here; we're talking about very basic stuff.

Certainly an all-knowing God would know how to communicate with his own creations.

You will never hear me making an argument in favor of slavery. However, it is also likely that He could have placed a burden on the people that was so great, they would have simply said, "Screw it." I'm speculating here because I can't tell you WHY God acted as He did. I mean, if the authors of the "fairy tale" called the Bible REALLY wanted to give themselves a break, why prohibit adultery? Whose brain-child was that?

What is apparent from the writings of the OT is that God led His people along a path of progressive revelation - as much as they could handle. And while it may offend our modern sensibilities, the fact is that the Mosaic Law was both an imposition upon a wild, unruly people (the Jews) as well as a big improvement for the slaves themselves.